Neil Gaiman is the author of numerous books including American Gods, The Sandman, Coraline, and The Ocean at the End of the Lane, and the winner of Hugo, Nebula, Newbery, Carnegie, and British National Book awards. Here is his famous list of eight rules about writing.
Rule one. “Write.”
Rule two. “Put one word after another. Find the right word, put it down.”
Rule three. “Finish what you’re writing. Whatever you have to do to finish it, finish it.”
Rule four. “Put it aside. Read it pretending you’ve never read it before. Show it to friends whose opinion you respect and who like the kind of thing that this is.”
Rule five. “Remember: when people tell you something’s wrong or doesn’t work for them, they are almost always right. When they tell you exactly what they think is wrong and how to fix it, they are almost always wrong.”
Rule six. “Fix it. Remember that, sooner or later, before it ever reaches perfection, you will have to let it go and move on and start to write the next thing. Perfection is like chasing the horizon. Keep moving.”
Rule seven. “Laugh at your own jokes.”
Rule eight. “The main rule of writing is that if you do it with enough assurance and confidence, you’re allowed to do whatever you like. (That may be a rule for life as well as for writing. But it’s definitely true for writing.) So write your story as it needs to be written. Write it honestly, and tell it as best you can. I’m not sure that there are any other rules. Not ones that matter.”
